Telecom
How Technology has Changed in the Past Ten Years
By Michael Björn
Predicting the future is easy – we do it all the time. The only tricky part is getting it right. Since it is that time of year again when we publish our annual 10 Hot Consumer Trends – our tenth anniversary of the report – let us look back at a decade of consumer technology trends.
Late in 2011, Ericsson Consumer Lab released the first 10 Hot Consumer Trends report and I remember quickly piecing it together on a plane on the way to a customer meeting. I have been the main author of all our trend reports since then, but this one certainly was written in a different and more innocent age.
Nevertheless, with the trend “Social media redefining news reporting” it already pointed to a world ruled by Tweet. And this wasn’t just about gossip columns, the report was crystal clear about serious news reporting being redefined by social networking.
The build out of 4G LTE networks formed much of our thinking back then, and the mobile technologies which would be built on top of them. The smartphone app industry and, in particular, the social media industry was already exploding around this time.
Take Twitter, for example. In 2007, Twitter users were sending around 20,000 tweets per day. By 2010, the numbers had spiked up to about 50 million tweets per day. Between 2014 and 2018, the average time spent on social media apps increased by almost 60 percent, as we found in our social media consumer report.
However, innovation in this space moves fast which makes it difficult to predict what will happen next. In the same report, we found that of the ten most popular social media platforms of 2008, five no longer existed ten years later and only two remained in the top ten.
In late 2012, we launched our second report which more or less exactly repeated a trend from the previous year, something that hasn’t happened since. It was about women driving the smartphone market, signifying that internet use was now massively mass market and no longer a “tech” thing.
The third report in 2013 launched the idea that biometrics would be everywhere, with a trend called “your body is the new password”, something to think about the next time you authorize an online purchase by showing your face to your phone. Four years later, Apple announced FaceID for the first time, based on depth-sensing infrared technology which also formed the basis of Xbox Kinect, launched some years earlier.
In late 2014 we took a big leap into the future with the launch of our 10 Hot Consumer Trends 2015 report and the trend “Mind Sharing” predicting that a wearable device to communicate with others directly through thoughts would be available by 2020. How wrong one can be! Or maybe just a bit too early, given that Neuralink in 2020 showed a pig with a brain implant and OpenBCI announced a brain sensing device that seamlessly attaches to VR goggles.
But the biggest media headlines came with the 2016 report and the trend “AI ends the screen age”. Ericsson says the smartphone will be dead in 5 years, yelled the press in what became almost like a global meme.
“What we really wanted to highlight was the early signs towards a paradigmatic shift where our everyday internet device eventually sits on our heads instead of in our palms. Hence, we followed that up in the 2017 trends with the idea that we are moving into a world of subjective experiences where AR glasses immerse us in an “augmented personal reality” and we eventually live in a “merged reality” without differing between physical and digital experiences.
In fact, the trend reports of the five last years have been quite much focused on this coming paradigmatic shift, with the 2018 trends highlighting the need for a fundamentally new user interface with “your body is the user interface” and the 2019 trends adding the idea of “my digital twin” before we wrapped all these predictions into a unified concept as the Internet of Senses in the most recent report.
While we firmly believe that physical reality will continue to merge with a multisensory digital experience going forward, we have decided to focus on a completely different development in our next report.
Michael Björn is Head of Research Agenda and Quality at Consumer & IndustryLab
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said that Nigeria’s internet usage reached a record 1.24 million terabytes in November 2025.
According to the latest data from the NCC, the figure rose modestly from 1.235 million terabytes in October, reflecting steady growth in digital activity across the country.
Broadband penetration in Nigeria crossed the halfway mark in November 2025, reaching 50.58 per cent, up from 45.61 per cent in January, the telecoms regulator reported.
The figure, however, falls short of the 70 per cent coverage target outlined in the National Broadband Plan 2020–2025, which expires this month.
The country had roughly 109 million broadband subscriptions by November. Growth has been uneven, hindered by infrastructure and regulatory constraints, including frequent fibre-optic vandalism that triggers 30 to 43 network cuts daily, high right-of-way fees, and declining subscriber numbers earlier in the year.
Expansion of mobile networks, particularly 3G and 4G services, alongside limited 5G rollouts in urban centres, affordable smartphones, and competitive data plans, has driven uptake.
Investments in the National Communications Backbone and private-sector initiatives have also improved access, especially in underserved areas.
While Nigeria is gradually improving digital inclusion, achieving the original broadband plan remains challenging due to high infrastructure costs, coverage limitations, and deployment hurdles.
The NCC maintains that continued investment in mobile networks and broadband infrastructure will sustain gradual growth in the sector.
Commenting on the development, some Nigerian analysts attributed the surge to the broader mobile and broadband adoption and the growing appetite for streaming, online learning and other digital services.
According to the analysts, the figures suggest that internet connectivity is no longer a luxury but a necessity for both business and leisure, underscoring the slow but steady expansion of Nigeria’s digital economy.
Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) has named the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) among the top three Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government with the Best Ranking in Website Performance for 2025.
L-R: Head Special Projects, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Salamatu Andu; Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), Engr. Abaraham Oshadame; Director General Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Head Customer Support Service, Galaxy Backbone, Rosemary Ehize; Secretary to the ES. Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Tahir Aminu at the BPSR award ceremony for top four MDAs in BPSR Website Performance and Ranking 2025 at the BPSR office on Tuesday, 23rd December, 2025.
This is coming barely three weeks after the telecom regulator was recognized as one of the top five best-performing Federal Government agencies for 2025 by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) – a testament to the Commission’s consistency in investment in technology for ensuring efficient service delivery.
In the BPSR 2024/2025 scorecard ranking of agencies’ websites, the NCC came second in the ranking, trailing behind Galaxy Backbone Limited, which came first while the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) clinched the third position, from a pool of 235 MDAs, whose website were evaluated.
BPSR deployed 14 evaluation criteria in include MDA’s website compliance with .gov.ng domain name, appearance and aesthetics (look and feel) of the website, content, relevance to MDAs mandate/government policy and the website’ structure.
Others include website’s responsiveness (device compatibility), security, load time, usability/ease of navigation, availability/uptime, functionality, interactivity, accessibility and capacity building.
The recognition was announced at the official release of Federal Government 2024/2025 Scorecard Ranking for MDAs’ Website held at the Federal Ministry of Finance Auditorium in Abuja on Monday (December 22, 2025) while the award presentation took place at BPSR’s Office on Tuesday (December 23, 2025).
The award, which is an important index metric of the National e-Government Masterplan for determining the Nigeria e-Government Status, was received by the Commission in recognition of its commitment to maintaining a world-class website that enhances service delivery to the citizens.
Receiving the award on behalf of the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, the NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Abraham Oshadami, appreciated the BPSR for the recognition, describing the award as “another encouragement for the Commission to be a better public service institution leveraging digital platforms such as our web presence to enhance public service delivery to our various stakeholders, thereby implementing the Federal Government’s Ease of Doing Business policy direction.”
While presenting the award to the NCC, alongside other two agencies, BPSR’s Director-General, Mr. Dasuki Arabi, commended the top three for their proactive decisions in maintaining world-class websites, which are compliant with the Federal Government’s policy direction in effective and efficient service delivery to the citizens.
According to the DG, the 2024/2025 MDA’s websites’ ranking represents a collective effort of federal public institutions in Nigeria to be transparent, accountable and open in governance, as well as a confirmation to align with global best practices in service delivery to the citizens.
Developed about six years ago, Arabi said as a result of the annual ranking, more public institutions have indicated readiness to embrace reforms, and align with the policy direction of the current administration’s Renewed Hope agenda on improve governance for effective service delivery, as introduced by His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“The ideals of harnessing and deploying technological tools for service delivery has become imperative following the COVID pandemic, and distortions of socio-economic system of nations, culminating in the evolution of competitiveness, cost effectiveness, and agile governance.
“As engine room of governance, it behoves on us in the public service to perform our statutory duties and we must put in place technological innovations and standardized websites to operate services as well as deliver service needs to citizens,” he said.
The Scorecard exercise, he said, is part of the BPSR reform broader function of conducting research on reform implementation efforts and presenting ‘best practice’ models to the entire Public Service, and to among others, improve access to government information, facilitate seamless financial transaction, eliminate corruption and cyber theft, as well as facilitate access to government services.
Speaking on the rigorous nature of the exercise that produced the top three winners, the DG said “in the past few weeks members of the Scorecard Jury drawn from inter-Ministerial Agencies, had worked tirelessly to mill websites of selected MDAs through a rigorous process of enduring criteria for the ranking and the outcome had also passed through a quality assurance mechanism to validate the outcome.”
Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, has dismissed reports that bank accounts not linked to a Tax Identification Number (TIN) will be frozen or automatically debited from January 1, 2026.
Taiwo Oyedele
Oyedele described the claims as false and misleading, warning Nigerians against panic over misinformation surrounding recent tax and financial reforms.
In a post on his X handle Tuesday morning, he wrote: “Don’t let anyone manipulate you. Your bank account is safe. Misinformation makes you panic and fear a reform that is designed to help you.
“When they tell you that your account will be frozen or automatically debited from January 2026, ask them for the evidence in the new law. Be wise.”
He stressed that no provision in the new tax laws authorises the freezing of bank accounts, adding that the rumours are part of widespread misrepresentation of the reforms.
The committee chairman reiterated that the reforms are intended to simplify Nigeria’s tax system and ease the burden on ordinary citizens, not to impose punitive measures on bank customers.
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